Well, this is a sad day, but I believe I have been scammed by a forum member "kamakazi". I bought a set of rims/tires from him back in January, but never received them. After I paid him, he told me that they were stolen from his garage. He expressed he was experiencing some personal problems at the time and asked me to wait until he gets his tax refund to pay me back. I felt bad for him so I agreed to work with him. Last contact I had with him was an email on February 5, 2008. I read over all his previous posts on the forum, and he seems to be a pretty standup guy. Maybe he is really having problems... Any help locating this individual is appreciated.
Thank you.

can he still file a claim thru paypal? hopefully he send u ur stuff back man

I tried filing a claim thru paypal, but I'm past their 45-day limit to file a claim. I think they only provide protection on ebay transactions so a personal transaction like this is not covered anyways...
I just wanted to share my bad experience with other forum members.
I've never had any issues buying stuff online before this happened so I probably wasn't being as cautious as I should have been. I learned my lesson the hard way.

There's nothing wrong with negotiating purchases via a forum, but then a good idea is to move the transaction to a protected system. I believe it is possible to create eBay auctions with a fixed price and for a specific user. That way everyone gets the buyer/seller protections offered by both eBay and PayPal. Just my $0.12 worth. (Adjusted for inflation of course :)

I hope you can contact him soon and get things worked out. The moderator staff here will help you out if you need anymore help. Just send one of us a PM.

I've sold & bought stuff off here without any problem the 5 years I have been here. I hate to hear of people getting scammed like this because it makes me not trust too many people now and it also makes me feel like no one trusts me when I sell something.

I hope you can contact him soon and get things worked out. The moderator staff here will help you out if you need anymore help. Just send one of us a PM.

I've sold & bought stuff off here without any problem the 5 years I have been here. I hate to hear of people getting scammed like this because it makes me not trust too many people now and it also makes me feel like no one trusts me when I sell something.

Thanks for the offer to help. I may take you up on it.
I hear you about the trust thing. I'm definitely going to be more careful from now on. This was a very expensive lesson for me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jmkreege

Paypal does protect you in private transactions if you file a claim

I tried filing a claim thru Paypal, but got a message saying that "this type of transaction is not protected". It didn't really tell me what they meant by "this type" of transaction, though...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peregrine

I doubt that they were stolen. Have you checked over on FJ to see if he has a for sale thread over there?

He did have them posted on FJ at the same time. I guess it's possible he sold them to someone else while taking my money also.
At this point, I'm not really expecting to get my money back. I just don't understand how people can sleep at night after pulling off a stunt like this

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